Here are 100 books that The Watchmaker of Filigree Street fans have personally recommended if you like
The Watchmaker of Filigree Street.
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I grew up in a confusing, chaotic household, and magic was always an escape for me. Books were my place to dream about other worlds and bigger choices. Stories of forgotten, invisible, or odd people who found their way to each other, found courage and talents they didn’t know they had, and then banded together to fight some larger foe even though they were scared. Was it possible that dragons and witches and gnomes were real and very clever at hiding in plain sight? What if I had hidden talents and courage and could draw on them with others just like me?
I’m a big fan of a story with quirky details that really add to getting to know the characters. It's even better when magic is thrown in the background in a way that makes it seem ordinary and acceptable—not strange at all.
This story does all of that and then some by taking outcasts and explaining their stories one by one while weaving them all together into one quiet redemption.
Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages.
When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not…
It’s great for me, personally, that queermeans both strangeand gay, in some way, because I’m both. I love writing stories that are zany, bizarre, and supernatural, but still grounded in the real world; giving detail to the strangeness makes it feel more real, like something that could have happened to a friend of a friend. I’m particularly moved by stories that work on both the literal and metaphorical level – being a werewolf is a metaphor for being queer and chronically ill, but my werewolf, Brigid, is also a chronically ill lesbian. Here are five of my favorite books that capture both definitions of the word queer.
The Mirror Season is a difficult and beautiful novel about trauma – sexual assault, specifically – and it’s handled so compassionately, kindly, and brightly. Its central metaphor losing your magic after something unthinkable happens to you, left only with broken shards, works on many levels (as all good metaphors do). Ciela and Lock are brought together after one horrible night at a party, and their relationship is rendered realistically – they struggle separately and together. The something queer is pan: enchanted pan dulce, and a pansexual protagonist.
"An unforgettable story of trauma and healing, told in achingly beautiful prose with great tenderness and care." ―#1 New York Times-bestselling author Karen M. McManus
When two teens discover that they were both sexually assaulted at the same party, they develop a cautious friendship through her family’s possibly-magical pastelería, his secret forest of otherworldly trees, and the swallows returning to their hometown, in Anna-Marie McLemore's The Mirror Season...
Graciela Cristales’ whole world changes after she and a boy she barely knows are assaulted at the same party. She loses her gift for making enchanted pan dulce. Neighborhood trees vanish overnight,…
Steampunk has always been a fascinating genre to me, especially seeing how different creators play with historical elements. But the question that I’m always looking to answer is, “Why is this history different from our own?” What has allowed this alternate Victorian era to create fantastical technology? As I asked this question about my own steampunk books, I found great delight in how other authors have combined magic with their technology to create delightfully refreshing outcomes. I continue to search out these books as I am always surprised at their creativity and novelty.
I love the pun on “finishing” school and how both meanings are taught to the characters. There is something so satisfying about being perfectly polite with all the proper decorum and being expertly capable of deadly violence.
I appreciate that Sophronia retains her rebellious ingenuity, using unique methods to solve her problems. And, of course, the whole thing is on an airship!
It's one thing to learn to curtsy properly. It's quite another to learn to curtsy and throw a knife at the same time. Welcome to finishing school.
Sophronia is a great trial to her poor mother. Sophronia is more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than proper manners-and the family can only hope that company never sees her atrocious curtsy. Mrs. Temminnick is desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady. So she enrolls Sophronia in Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality.
But Sophronia soon realizes the school is not quite what her mother might…
As a young doctor, Carl Holman has experienced the horrors of World War I and the death of his lover, a fellow officer. Back home after the War, he befriends a young jazz musician who he hopes will become a companion he can share his life with. But this is…
As a queer, nonbinary author and lover of historical fiction, I’ve spent countless hours thinking about how to tell stories I care about in a genre that has traditionally excluded people like me. We all know that life was hard for LGBTQ+ folks growing up in, well, basically any time in recent history. There’s a time and place for realistic depictions of those hardships, but we also need space to imagine ourselves in more joyful, fantastical depictions of the past. After all, if straight people can enjoy Jane Austen without thinking too hard about the legal rights of women during that era, why can’t queer people do the same?
Have you ever read Dracula and thought, “What if the vampire were a lady? An extremely gay lady?” That’s Carmilla in a nutshell!
The story actually predates Bram Stoker’s tale by several years, making it a neat little literary artifact on its own, but this isn’t some dry historical text. It is, in fact, super heckin’ horny, to the point that I would strongly advise against listening to the audiobook with, say, your parents or other unsuspecting cishets in the room. It’s gonna get awkward.
It’s also fairly short, making for an easy, steamy bedtime read for anyone who’d like to imagine themself as a waifish little lass ravaged nightly by your lesbian vampire BFF.
In an isolated castle deep in the Austrian forest, Laura leads a solitary life with only her ailing father for company. Until one moonlit night, a horse-drawn carriage crashes into view, carrying an unexpected guest - the beautiful Carmilla.
So begins a feverish friendship between Laura and her mysterious, entrancing companion. But as Carmilla becomes increasingly strange and volatile, prone to eerie nocturnal wanderings, Laura finds herself tormented by nightmares and growing weaker by the day...
Pre-dating Dracula by twenty-six years, Carmilla is the original vampire story, steeped in sexual tension and gothic romance.
The past is a powerful thing. It’s what we turn to when confronted with the question “how did we get here?” When I began my journey as an author in earnest, that was the question I was facing, and it was the one I wanted my characters to explore. But one book wasn’t enough to satisfy me, and I went searching for other titles that scratched that same itch of examining and confronting our pasts to work out our future. For me, these books were the ones that struck that cord the hardest.
Meddling Kids asks the question, “What would it be like if the Scooby gang retired because they were traumatized by a case where the monsters were real?” And the answer is a story about bravery, overcoming personal demons, and seeing through the rose colored glasses. It gets a little weird in places, but overall it’s a good and uplifting time.
A nostalgic and subversive trip rife with sly nods to H. P. Lovecraft and pop culture, in the vein of It and Stranger Things.
An exuberant and wickedly entertaining celebration of horror, love, friendship, and many-tentacled, interdimensional demon spawn. SUMMER 1977. The Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in Oregon's Zoinx River Valley) solved their final mystery and unmasked the elusive Sleepy Lake monster-another low-life fortune hunter trying to get his dirty hands on the legendary riches hidden in Deboen Mansion. And he would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those…
Steampunk has always been a fascinating genre to me, especially seeing how different creators play with historical elements. But the question that I’m always looking to answer is, “Why is this history different from our own?” What has allowed this alternate Victorian era to create fantastical technology? As I asked this question about my own steampunk books, I found great delight in how other authors have combined magic with their technology to create delightfully refreshing outcomes. I continue to search out these books as I am always surprised at their creativity and novelty.
How could I resist steampunk zombies? Every character in this book is unique and memorable, and I admire their grit and ingenuity as they navigate the dangerous environment they live in.
I found it very refreshing to have a book focused on the relationship between a middle-aged mother and her teenage son, and that it was her love for him that drove all her choices.
At the start of the Civil War, a Russian mining company commissions a great machine to pave the way from Seattle to Alaska and speed up the gold rush that is beating a path to the frozen north. Inventor Leviticus Blue creates the machine, but on its first test run it malfunctions, decimating Seattle's banking district and uncovering a vein of Blight Gas that turns everyone who breathes it into the living dead. Sixteen years later Briar, Blue's widow, lives in the poor neighborhood outside the wall that's been built around the uninhabitable city. Life is tough with a ruined…
When King Priam's pregnant daughter was fleeing the sack of Troy, Stan was there. When Jesus of Nazareth was beaten and crucified, Stan was there - one crossover. He’s been a Hittite warrior, a Silk Road mercenary, a reluctant rebel in the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381, and an information peddler…
Steampunk has always been a fascinating genre to me, especially seeing how different creators play with historical elements. But the question that I’m always looking to answer is, “Why is this history different from our own?” What has allowed this alternate Victorian era to create fantastical technology? As I asked this question about my own steampunk books, I found great delight in how other authors have combined magic with their technology to create delightfully refreshing outcomes. I continue to search out these books as I am always surprised at their creativity and novelty.
This is my favorite of the Wax and Wayne series! Not only do the characters really work together in ways we haven’t seen before, but the treasure-seeking adventure gripped me tight and wouldn’t let me go. I could not put the book down; from train-top fights to secret base infiltrations, to ancient booby-traps, I was hooked the entire time.
Light humor and deep emotion in equal measure made this an entertaining read that has stuck with me more than any of the other books in the series.
The Mistborn trilogy has become a firm favourite with fantasy fans the world over. The imagination that Sanderson brought to the series and his skill at marshalling epic storylines and dramatic action, his ability to create vivid characters made him a natural choice to complete Robert Jordan's epic wheel of time sequence. But with Mistborn, Sanderson has shown his bountiful talents in his own fiction. Now he returns to the series that made his name with a new story, building on the incredible success of THE ALLOY OF LAW.
The new Mistborn books move the series into a richly imagined…
Steampunk has always been a fascinating genre to me, especially seeing how different creators play with historical elements. But the question that I’m always looking to answer is, “Why is this history different from our own?” What has allowed this alternate Victorian era to create fantastical technology? As I asked this question about my own steampunk books, I found great delight in how other authors have combined magic with their technology to create delightfully refreshing outcomes. I continue to search out these books as I am always surprised at their creativity and novelty.
In true Sanderson fashion, the worldbuilding in this book is unparalleled. I adore how he has blended both steampunk elements and an entirely unique magic system revolving around chalk drawings–it gives a sense of a much larger world beyond what the story shows.
The combination of art and math in the magic system is something that really fascinated me, and I love how the characters only succeeded when they combined their respective strengths. I always love a good mystery-adventure in a school setting!
The Rithmatist, Brandon Sanderson's New York Times bestselling epic teen adventure is now available in paperback.
More than anything, Joel wants to be a Rithmatist. Rithmatists have the power to infuse life into two-dimensional figures known as Chalklings. Rithmatists are humanity's only defense against the Wild Chalklings. Having nearly overrun the territory of Nebrask, the Wild Chalklings now threaten all of the American Isles.
As the son of a lowly chalkmaker at Armedius Academy, Joel can only watch as Rithmatist students learn the magical art that he would do anything to practice. Then students start disappearing―kidnapped from their rooms at…
The Cold War has never been a passion for me, but rather a kind of horror. It was ongoing all through my childhood, and I had nightmares about nuclear attacks and Soviet spies. We lived in the middle of a Suffolk pine forest during the 60s and 70s. There was an American air base on the edge of the forest, surrounded by a tall wire fence. It seemed a spooky place with its concrete bunkers and keep-out signs. Later, as an author on the lookout for good stories, I remembered my childhood terrors and the atmosphere of menace surrounding the base. It gave me an idea for a story set in a similar airbase.
While doing research into Ruby’s backstory, I discovered this book. It reads like a novel but tells the stories of four real women who married American servicemen and left war-torn Britain for the more lavish lifestyle available to Americans in the 50s. But the arduous journey by sea, the intrusive and humiliating health examinations waiting on the other side, and the strangeness of a strange land provided challenges and difficulties. Each woman’s experience is different, but each is determined not to give up on their dream. An epilogue tells of how their marriages and lives worked out. Fascinating.
From the bestselling authors of The Sugar Girls, G.I. Brides weaves together the real-life stories of four women who crossed the ocean for love, providing a moving true tale of romance and resilience.
The 'friendly invasion' of Britain by over a million American G.I.s caused a sensation amongst a generation of young women deprived of male company during the Second World War. With their exotic accents, smart uniforms and aura of Hollywood glamour, the G.I.s soon had the local girls queuing up for a date, and the British boys off fighting abroad turning green with envy.…
This delightful fable about the Golden Age of Broadway unfolds the warm story of Artie, a young rehearsal pianist, Joe, a visionary director, and Carrie, his crackerjack Girl Friday, as they shepherd a production of a musical version of A Midsummer Night's Dream towards opening night.
I was in my 40s before I began exploring the topic of the British Empire. It came after I realised it explained so much about me (my Sikh identity, the emigration of my parents, my education) and so much about my country (its politics, psychology, wealth…) and yet I knew very little. It turned out that millions of people feel the same way… and I hope I provide an accessible introduction and summary of the massive topic.
In peerless prose, Winder proffers a simple thesis: that Britain is a nation of immigrants.
Despite our German royal family, and all those businesses created by Jews and Indians, we have long been a nation in denial about the immigrant blood flowing through our veins. To such a degree in the Windrush Scandal we have seen actual British citizens being threatened with deportation to countries they barely know.
This important book also challenges the dominant political narrative of my lifetime: that immigrants come here uninvited to take advantage of British hospitality.
If there was one book I could wish onto the National Curriculum, it would be this.
Immigration is one of the most important stories of modern British life, yet it has been happening since Caesar first landed in 53 BC. Ever since the first Roman, Saxon, Jute and Dane leaped off a boat we have been a mongrel nation. Our roots are a tangled web. From Huguenot weavers fleeing French Catholic persecution in the 18th century to South African dentists to Indian shopkeepers; from Jews in York in the 12th century (who had to wear a yellow star to distinguish them and who were shamefully expelled by Edward I in 1272) to the Jamaican who came…
